02/28/2006

Anyone with even a casual knowledge of the Old West has at least a passing knowledge of the name Charles M. Russell. Even if the name doesn't ring a bell, you've probably seen one of his paintings or statuary.

Several years ago, when I first learned about Mary Fields and began the long hunt for information about her, I was told that this legendary artist had done a pen and ink drawing of her inspired by meeting her in Cascade. He wasn't the first celeb to encounter her; Gary Cooperknew her when he was a child, having witnessed the incident involving Mary and the guy who welshed on the laundry bill. I'm fairly convinced that Cooper's mention of Mary in an interview in Jet Magazine in the late 1960s marked the start of the excruciatingly slow awareness of her existence within the wider sphere.

Anyway, I've never been able to find a copy of this drawing. (And for the record, I don't think this is due to it being suppressed by whitey. I think it's more a function of obscure pen & ink drawing+time+not a painting=not high on any museum or collector's general radar.) I know what the drawing is supposed to contain, though I'm still not clear on if it's based on something Russell witnessed or if he made up the scenario. I like to think it was something he saw go down there on Central Avenue. From what I know of what's supposed to be in the drawing, it's hilarious, and even if only 1/4th of the stories about Mary are factually true, the scenario in this drawing is highly probable.

Again with the anyways. I bring this up because out of the blue earlier today a buddy who has known about my various Mary things brewing calls up to pass along something he was told to pass along by an acquaintance of his friend. Did she call the Wedsworth? And I'm like, did I call the whozit? And he's like, did you call the Wedsworth? And I blinked at that linky and just about fell over.

I called the Wesdworth. Nice people. Very small place I'm thinking, based on this (reconstructed) exchange:

"Hello. I was told you have the Charles Russell drawing of Mary Fields available on a T-shirt. Is that true?"

"I'm the assistant librarian. I don't handle this. You let me go over to City Hall and see."

"I can call back. What time is good for you? I'm calling from Los Angeles. I think I'm a couple of hours behind you."

"Oh no. You just hold on."

She didn't push a hold button. She put the phone down on a table or something. Apparently, 'going to City Hall' meant walking across the room! I listened to two (possibly three) female voices and a male voice talk about something that (I think) had to do with permits, interspersed with a little everyday wrapping-it-up chit-chat. And when the male voice said goodbye and left, the assistant librarian voice explained that someone from California was on the phone. And I winced at hearing one of the other female voices say "no, we don't have that" as both voices moved closer to me on hold on the table. Then the new voice picked up the phone.

This new voice tells me they don't have T-shirts with the drawing.

What they have are prints.

Large and medium prints, along with postcards.

She explains what the differences are between them, as far as the contained elements. She tells me how much they are. Asks me how many I want. Tells me she can't take my moolah over the phone because "we don't do that sort of thing". Tells me to send a check. Gives me the address. Tells me that not to send the check now, because she has to take the stuff over to the post office and get a mailing tube and have them weigh it first. This might not happen for a couple of days, though, because she's part-time and about to get off.

"You're not in a hurry, are you?"

"No." (this was a lie. it's real! you have it! omigodomigod SEND IT NOW)

"Because you said you're in Los Angeles."

"No, I'm not in a hurry." (lies) "Friday is fine. Thank you so much. Thank you. I can't tell you. This is so wonderful." (truth)

So she said she'll get to the post office as soon as she can, and then she'll call me back to tell me how much to send. But that might not be until Friday, okay?

The whole thing was so fucking great. Listening to them all, having her carefully explain what's available and the logistics of getting it here and we don't do credit cards over the phone. And how they were all friendly. Business, but friendly. Not arms-length. I was about to start crying again. These are the the sort of people Mary lived with, way back then.

As an aside, currently there are only about 600 people living in Cascade town proper. Which is probably why visiting city hall meant walking across the room.

And I'm thinking about this because on Sunday night I finished the beta draft of the script through a fog of medications (and tears, which haven't completely stopped). I don't know. I've been thinking about this all day since I hung up the phone. It's like I FINALLY got this thing done (and it was hell at times let me tell you), and the universe says okay! Here's your shiny gold star!

I know this is rather long and rambly. Also I am violating a *huge* personal rule just posting it. But my energy is almost gone - I don't think I'm well enough yet to take this kind of excitement - and when I get home I'm going to collapse into bed. I'm just feeling really weird mood about this Charles M. Russell falling out of the sky at this particular moment in time, and felt like rambling while I still could.

Once more with the anyways. As soon as I'm done formatting the script***, it's off via the Internet(s) to Brazil. When the posters arrive, one of them is also going to Brazil, too, as a peace offering of sorts in case the poor dear falls over screaming when he notices the word count. All I have to say is if you've ever seen an Alan Moore script (which i have because I own the From Hell scriptbook which you probably don't...nyah nyah) it's not so bad, really. And The Man himself said just last week that every Sandman script was at *least* 10,000 words long, that . So you, you know. I think I'm in the mean, here. That's gonna be my story, anyway, and I'm sticking to it.

Don't tell him, though. Its a surprise.

*** I DESPISE formatting. It's the very last thing I do. Depending on the size of the work, it can take me four days to format an entire comic script. It takes me that long because I have a day job so I have to use the evening writing time to format.

02/26/2006

The very first post I made when I started this blog two Decembers ago was comprised of her words. Rather than try to articulate what my heart has been going through since getting the news today of her death on Saturday, I return to her words.

Embrace diversity.Unite --Or be divided, robbed, ruled, killedBy those who see you as prey.Embrace diversityOr be destroyed.-- EARTHSEED: The Books of the Living

That's from Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. As said before, if you're unfamiliar with her work, get thee to a library. Here are some other places for information.

02/23/2006

We are sick and facing down a couple of deadlines that could give a fuck about the Sick part. So as we tried to go back and forth between loading up on Tylenol Sore Throat Daytime and Alka-Seltzer Plus Night Time Cold (depending), and to edit down a 10,000-word interview transcript to 2,200 words for the day job, and fix the latest thing Old Eagle Eyes found wrong with Black Mary script (Bruno surely curses my name by now), the thought hits that what we REALLY need to do is just go back to bed for many uninterrupted hours.

Perhaps there will be less vomiting and more healing on the morrow. Tales of movie sneak previews at the Arclight goodness and a roundup of good stuff at the Pan African Film Fest you should try to catch if they come to your town will have to wait until next week. At this moment, it is unclear whether or not we are going to be functional enough to attend the Chris Ware event at the Hammer. Just the thought of missing it brings the whisp of tears. I didn't know he was self-taught. Wow. Even more impressive...

Hmmm... Glut of notes in the spamblocker from angry Firefly people. Wonder who linked to it this time? I love that handy Delete All feature.

Get the feeling it would just kill the woman to say outright that Brockmeier's novel is genre? Much of his short fiction is, too. Not all of it, but lots of the stuff I've seen. I've read a lot of this guy's stuff because it's gorgeous, which is the main reason I was informed enough to read this review and go hmmmm. Not to just pick on this woman, but this Nose Up, Dismissive Flutter to shoo genre away from anything that does not conform to their ignorantly narrow-minded, old school assumptions is something I am so tired of seeing out there in mainstream reviewer land. The same thing happened with the Ishiguro book she mentions in the review.

Clicky above and read the rest of her ridiculously mambly review. I wonder if she noticed how she slipped up a little bit and accidentally said "fantasy" as if it weren't a bad thing.

02/21/2006

East West Players, a pan-Asian theater company based downtown, is doing Sweeney Todd through March 5, which means I had a chance to finally see this play live. Until last week, I'd only seen the dvd version with Landsbury & Hearn.

The first thing that struck me is the Upsetting nature of this play is doubled, nay, tripled! when it's live. There was more than one I want my Mommy moment. Which was fabulous!

The EWP show is excellent. It stars Ronald M. Banks, Marilyn Tokuda, Timothy Ford Murphy, Jennifer Jung and Samuel Chen. All of them had wonderful voices, great timing and threw themselves into it. In addition to nods to the leads, special kudos must also be given to Lito Villareal, who played the Beadle, and Antoine Reynaldo Diel, who played Pirelli. Those two practically had us on the floor every time they showed up.

It was a little disconcerting that the guy who plays Sweeney, Banks, is a hottie. We had a bit of a discussion over appropriateness of Sweeney being a hottie. We are still Unsettled by this. Not only did the man look good, but he had a voice to make you make you melt. Boy got some lungs on him.

I was particularly interested in seeing how they were going to handle the whole issue of Johanna's hair. For anyone who hasn't seen the play, Johanna is the blonde, innocent love interest. There are several places in Anthony's songs (he's the young man in love with her) where the golden nature of her hair comes up in passing. There's also one song, just before the rescue attempt, dedicated to her hair specifically and all the different types of blonde hair in general. Once I was alerted that we had tickets, the FIRST thing I thought was what are they going to do about the Glory Of Blonde song? I had a horrified image of - ala Halle Berry as Storm - some poor Japanese actress forced to walk around wearing a big blonde wig. Well! Their solution was simple. "Golden" became "raven" for the in-passing songs, and the song that's all about blonde hair in general simply didn't show up. Excellent decision!

I only had two quibbles about the production. First, the makeup was way off. A lot of the characters were made up as if they were extras in a zombie movie, particularly the beggar woman. In fact, her makeup had a slight Kabuki vibe to it, though we might have been reading too much into that. And I can't for the life of me figure out why they put the pretty girl who played Johanna in white pancake foundation with two huge, garish red splotches on her cheeks. Was that supposed to be funny? It was distracting and creepy (not in a good way). Second, the stage lighting was too dark. I'm guessing they were going for atmosphere, but if the actor was standing an inch off the mark, they were mostly in shadow. I like to be able to see the actors faces.

But those quibbles aside, it was an excellent show and if you have a chance, go see it! Don't worry about getting a good seat - they're all good. It's a small space.

02/20/2006

For some reason it's Hollywood Week here at BGF Central. I have to tell you what happened on on Wednesday!!

So I'm down in Little Tokyo to snag tasty/cheap lunch, and I'm doing the Where Is The Parking thing, which is part of daily life around here. I am annoyed and also hungry. I turn off Third onto San Pedro, and you know what I ran right into? A shoot for The Shield! And how did I know it was The Shield? Because standing RIGHT THERE was Michael Chiklis!! The first thing I thought after omigodwhereismycellihavetocalldad, and just before oshitialmosthitthatcop, was OMIGODMAYBETHEMAGNIFICENTCCHPOUNDERISTHEREASWELL!!

So I whip around the block, screaming dude!putmethroughtothechief!it'stheoneincalifornia!putmethrough! to the guy who answered the phone at the station as I throw the car into a space that may or may not have been legal just as the call was dropped mid-yell. Then I fling myself out of the car. Then I strolled down the sidewalk as if I had no idea what all this fuss was with all these people on the sidewalk and such. And I smile nicely and I ask Hey! What's going on? And the nice production people said it's The Shield, and I say Oh I love that show! It's so well written! Are the Magnificent CCH Pounderor the Deeply Talented Michael Chiklis here? And the nice production lady said if I stand right next to her and behave, and don't try to take any pictures, I'll see at least one of them. And I said REALLY?? And she said yes. So I obeyed. And then she said she liked my Love & Rockets T-shirt, so we got to talking about Los Bros, whom she was unfamiliar with. And then, five minutes later MICHAEL CHIKLIS WAS STANDING LESS THAN TWO FEET FROM ME, ACTING AND EVERYTHING!

*geek*

And then I said thanks and wandered off, and as soon as I turned the corner, called Dad again. This time the guy working the phones put me right through.

"You scared him," is what Dad said.

"I SAW MICHAEL CHIKLIS!!!" was my reply.

Dad and I are divided on which show was better, The Commishor The Shield. (The answer, OBVIOUSLY is The Shield, no matter what that man thinks), but we are united in our admiration of the skills of Michael Chiklis.